Lara Parker, Star of Soap Opera Drama “Dark Shadows”, Dead at 84

The star died at her Los Angeles home on Thursday

Lara Parker, best known for her role as the Witch Angelique Bouchard on Dark Shadows, has died.

Parker died in her sleep on Thursday morning in her Los Angeles home, her Dark Shadows costar Kathryn L. Scott confirmed on Facebook Monday. She would have been 85 years old next week.

“For more than 50 years, our lives were intertwined through our mutual love of literature, writing, and acting,” wrote Scott. “We could not have been more unalike, and therein lay the magic of our enduring friendship. My thoughts are with her family in this sad time of grief and remembrance."

Parker's daughter, Caitlin Hawkins, confirmed her mother's passing in a statement to The Hollywood Reporter.

Born Mary Lamar Rickey on Oct. 27, 1938, in Knoxville, Tennessee, the actress got her start after heading to New York where she auditioned in her second-ever, professional audition, which landed her the role of Angelique in the ABC soap series.

Ahead of beginning her professional career, Parker attended Vassar College in New York, where she roomed with Jane Fonda. Then, she completed her undergraduate degree at Southwestern at Memphis, which is now Rhodes College. The native Tennessean then earned her master's degree in drama from the University of Iowa.

After she completed her education, she married her first husband, Tom Parker, with whom she shared two sons, Rick and Andy Parker. But after residing in Wisconsin with her children, she traveled to N.Y.C. to join Dan Curtis’ series, Dark Shadows.

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The series aired from 1966 to 1971 and followed the founding family of the fictional Maine town, Collinsport. At the start of the series, Barnabas Collins (Jonathan Frid) rejects the advances of Parker’s Angelique and the witch curses Barnabas, turning him into a vampire. After she strikes her revenge, the two engage in a centuries-long tumultuous love-hate relationship.

“We realized [the show] was popular,” the actress said of the show in 2022. “Everywhere we went [the cast was] recognized. There was a huge crowd outside the [Manhattan] studio when we finished in the afternoon of autograph seekers. People would show up, the same people every single day, day after day. They worshipped some of us and would walk us to the subway."

“[Angelique] was coming in at the beginning of the women’s movement and she was very independent,” added Parker.

During her Dark Shadows tenure, the actress later starred in a film based on the series, Night of Dark Shadows, in 1971, and the year prior starred in Hi, Mom!, a Brian De Palma film alongside Robert De Niro.

Soon after the series wrapped, she relocated to Los Angeles and continued her career on the West Coast. By 1975, she divorced her first husband and then met her second husband, Jim Hawkins, whom she married in 1980. The couple later welcomed their daughter, Caitlin, in 1985.

The actress also starred in the 1973 Oscar-winning feature, Save the Tiger, as well as Race with the Devil, alongside her old roommate's brother, Peter Fonda in 1975.

Parker also starred in several TV series, including Jessica Novak, Medical Center, Kojak, The Rockford Files, Police Woman, Kolchak: The Night Stalker and The Incredible Hulk.

More recently in 2013 and 2014, the actress joined two Doctor Mabuse films. Prior to Doctor Mabuse, she made a cameo in  Tim Burton’s 2012 remake, Dark Shadows, which starred Johnny Depp as Barnabas and Eva Green as Angelique.

As she continued her acting career, the performer also turned to writing and expanded the Dark Shadows universe, more than 25 years after the series wrapped. Parker first wrote Dark Shadows: Angelique’s Descent in 1998, and then in 2006, 2013, and 2016, she wrote Dark Shadows: The Salem Branch, Dark Shadows: Wolf Moon Rising, and Dark Shadows: Heiress of Collinwood, respectively.

Parker is survived by her second husband, Jim Hawkins, her children Caitlin, Rick and Andy; her daughters-in-law Miranda and Celia, and her grandson, Wesley.

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